The Last Reporter (29 page)

In the end they decided to put it on page one because it would give readers a few laughs and a break from all the seriousness in the other stories.

Despite Phoebe.

However, they did continue the column on the back page, under the bowling-team results.

At the end of the column, they printed the Ask Phoebe link to the new
Slash
website. As the world’s greatest third-grade reporter explained to her readers: “In case you have questions during summer vacation and need Ask Phoebe to solve your problems right away.”

They had included the letter from Confused Middle Schooler. Adam wanted to apologize to Jennifer for being so stupid but didn’t know how. She had never admitted writing it, and he didn’t want to embarrass her; things were going too well.

So he would have let it go, except when the two of them were making a final check for errors, Jennifer said, “I wonder if readers will think this letter is as hilarious as the
Slash
staff did.”

“The boy in the letter sounds like a total idiot,” Adam said.

“He’s not that bad,” said Jennifer. “The girl’s the bigger idiot.”

“No, no, she’s not,” said Adam. “It took courage to write that. You know what I don’t get, though — why such a neat girl would write a nincompoop like Phoebe.”

“Maybe this girl thought it was a safe way to get the boy’s attention,” said Jennifer. “They say middle-school boys aren’t really good at talking about feelings.”

“Makes sense,” said Adam.

“Just a theory,” said Jennifer.

They were done.

They were actually done.

They couldn’t wait to get that golden CD to the printer. After school Tuesday, the two of them were going to ride their bikes to the print shop and drop it off. They were so excited about everyone finally seeing the paper. Jennifer had looked up Mrs. Boland’s mailing address at the Tremble County office building. They were going to use twenty dollars from the extra money they’d raised to express-mail her one of the first copies hot off the presses.

Adam wanted to include a note:
Dear Mrs. Boland, Thought you might be interested, heh-heh-heh. PSYCHE
!

Jennifer nixed the note part.

The printer wouldn’t print the paper.

At first he said the shop had a big summer rush. “June weddings coming out of our ears,” he said. “Holy Communions, brisses, the auto show, Tooky Berry’s Paint Ball Emporium annual summer shoot-out.”

The coeditors could not believe what they were hearing. It was too shocking to understand at first. “You have stuff like that every June,” said Jennifer. “We always do a June
Slash.
We never had a problem before.”

The printer said there were other factors, like he was having trouble with one of the presses, and they were running behind.

“How far behind?” Jennifer asked.

“When do you need it?” he asked.

School was almost over. The eighth-grade moving-up ceremony was in three days.

Jennifer told him by the start of the fourth week of June at the latest.

“Oh, no,” said the printer. “It would be July at best.”

July, thought Adam. Everyone would be gone by July. He’d be gone. Surfing at his grandma’s cottage. Wakeboarding. Picking wild blueberries. Lying in those open fields staring up at Mrs. Ameche’s two perfect clouds. This wasn’t fair. They’d killed themselves to get this done, and now this guy was telling them they couldn’t have it until July?

“Mid-July at earliest,” the printer said.

Jennifer was smoking mad, Adam could see it. She pulled out the receipt for the five-hundred-dollar deposit for getting the
Slash
printed and waved it in his face.

“You’ll get your money back — don’t worry,” he said.

“It says right here that we could get the
Slash
to you anytime this week,” Jennifer said. “We made our deadline.”

“Well, you barely made it,” the printer said.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Adam. “You guys have been printing the
Slash
forever.”

“It’s different,” said the man. “My understanding is that you’re not the school paper anymore. That right?”

“So what?” said Adam. “We’re still paying the same money.”

“So it’s not the same relationship,” said the man. “Look, kid, I got things to do. Wait here. I’ll get your money.”

Jennifer and Adam looked at each other. Something rotten was up. They could smell it. They were pissed. Adam started pacing the room. Everywhere were glossy publications, brochures, piles of freshly printed wedding invitations, confirmations, bar mitzvahs, recreation schedules with the summer hours for the county parks, flyers for Tremble’s July Fourth fireworks display and stacks and stacks of the latest
Citizen - Gazette - Herald - Advertiser.

The
Citizen - Gazette - Herald - Advertiser
? Adam froze. The Bolands’
Citizen-Gazette-Herald-Advertiser
? Oh, my God, that was it. This guy printed the Bolands’ newspaper. Mrs. Boland must have ordered him not to print the
Slash.
“What a coward!” Adam blurted out.

“Who?” said Jennifer.

Before Adam could say another word, the man came back in and handed Jennifer an envelope with the deposit money.

“Count it,” Adam said to Jennifer. “Make sure it’s all there.”

She did, got to the end, made a funny face, and started counting again.

“I knew it,” said Adam, looking at the printer, “You should be ashamed. We may not be the high and mighty Bolands, but we are kids.”

“Adam,” said Jennifer softly. “Stop. It’s not what you think. There’s two hundred dollars extra.”

“I’m sorry,” said the printer. “I really am.”

The thing about the United States of America — even before there was a country, even before there was a Congress and a Supreme Court and a president and a White House and a First Lady and interstate highways, even when this great continent was still mostly bears, beavers, trees, and fruited plains, there were already lots of guys with printing presses. Adam and Jennifer had no problem finding another printer to do the
Slash.
The Bolands might have scared and bullied and threatened the citizenry of Tremble County. But as big a media conglomerate as Bolandvision Cable was — with monopolies in forty-eight television markets across the nation — the farther you went from Tremble, the more their bulliness shrunk. The coeditors asked several adults — Mrs. Ameche, Mrs. Quigley, Mr. Brooks, Adam’s grown-up friend Danny — for names of print shops and put together a list of more than a half dozen, mostly in the Tri-River Region’s three cities.

The first one they called said yes.

They decided to use the two hundred extra dollars to print a hundred additional copies of the
Slash.

And they now planned to express-mail
ten
copies to Mrs. Boland just for the pure joy of it.

The days that followed were sweet for Adam. While the coeditors waited to get the
Slash
back from the new printer, they took final exams. This wasn’t nearly as bad as it sounded. School was a half day during exam week, and even if they went for extra help, they were done by noon. With sports and clubs over, they had the rest of the day free. Adam finally got to go swimming in the Tremble River. He put together a big basketball game at the Rec courts and organized his friends into a game of manhunt on the streets of River Path.

Wherever he went, he rode his new bike.

It was like a dress rehearsal for summer vacation, and it felt great.

After the English final, Mrs. Stanky handed back their profiles. Adam got an A+. She wrote that in all her years teaching, she’d never read a better profile. She liked Adam’s ending best.

Adam had written:

Early Tuesday morning, the entire
Slash
staff gathered in the alley behind the West River Diner. Adam and Jennifer had six big bundles of the June issue, tied with wire. Everyone was tingly with excitement. The coeditors gave each staff member twenty-five copies to hand out. Jennifer had already put aside papers for Mrs. Quigley and for Mr. Brooks, who would get them to all the teachers. In case there were any problems, they had safely stashed away twenty-five copies at Jennifer’s house.

The staff was so worked up, it was hard for the coeditors to get their attention. Finally, Adam lost patience and slammed half of his bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwich on the sidewalk. It didn’t make much of a sound — just a little scraping of tinfoil against the concrete — but the sight of a middle-school boy wasting perfectly good food was a shock and silenced them.

He and Jennifer explained that they didn’t expect any trouble. They said that they had talked to Mrs. Quigley, she’d given them the go-ahead, she knew today was the day, and no teachers or security guards would cause them any problems. But she’d also warned that she couldn’t control anyone from the central office who might happen by or heaven forbid, the police. “At the first sign of trouble,” Adam said, “make a single, high, loud caw like a crow — that’s our official warning signal.” He demonstrated for them and it came out pretty good; he’d been practicing for the past week in the shower. “You hear that caw,” he continued, “stick whatever newspapers you have left in your backpack and get into the school as fast as possible.”

Jennifer said she needed five volunteers for a recovery committee. They would go around the school and be responsible for grabbing any papers that had been tossed out and were still in good enough shape to reuse. “We don’t want to waste a single issue,” she said, and they understood. They’d raised every penny to print that paper themselves. It hadn’t been easy.

“Any questions?” asked Adam, and the moment he did, he knew it was a mistake. Phoebe was wiggling her hand wildly.

“What?” he said. “Please, we’ve got to get over to the school. Make it fast.”

Phoebe pulled a plastic bag from her pocket. “In case any of Stub’s boys give us a problem, they’re going down,” squeaked Phoebe, who started twirling a jawbreaker high over her head.

Adam looked at Jennifer. Phoebe really was out of her mind. And what was worse — this was the person they were allowing to give advice to a whole school full of impressionable children.

“Phoebe, no,” said Jennifer. “Put that thing away. No violence. If there are any problems, I want you going right into the school. Please tell me nobody else has one of those ridiculous things.”

And then, one by one, the entire staff, every last one of them, pulled jawbreakers out of their pockets and twirled them high overhead.

Including Jennifer.

They were howling.

They were cawing like crows.

Everywhere Adam looked, he saw those hard white spheres, orbiting past his head.

What idiots. What divine jerks. What perfect nincompoops. He loved them, every last one of their ridiculous birdbrain selves.

Finally, Sammy raised his hands for quiet. “Ad-man,” he said, “just wanted you to know we appreciate all you do.”

And then they holstered their jawbreakers, grabbed their piles of newspapers, and, falling in formation behind Jennifer, marched down the street to spread the news.

Spread it, they did. In the past, people had to read the stories to figure out what the big deal was. This time, just being handed a copy of the
Slash
seemed like a miracle.

“Isn’t this shut down?” kids kept asking.

“Not anymore,” squeaked Phoebe. “By the way, you might want to check out the Ask Phoebe column. On the front page. It’s me, in case you were wondering.”

While geographically they couldn’t be urban legends, they were rapidly becoming the next best thing: suburban superheroes, a band of kids who single-handedly stood up to the school board and the superintendent and all the deputy super-dupers
and
the most powerful family in Tremble County, and all by their lonesome selves printed a newspaper that was as true as true could be.

At least that was the superhero myth. In reality, no one knew better than Adam and Jennifer that they never could have done it without all the good grown-ups who’d helped. Adam thought of it like that scientific principle they had to memorize in Mr. Devillio’s class, the Law of Conservation of Matter: for every sworn enemy who tried to destroy them, like Deputy Super-Duper Bleepin, there was an equally powerful friend to the bitter end, like Deputy Super-Duper Duke.